I don’t want to write another post-mortem about a light novel anime adaptation. The Reign of the Seven Spellblades anime technically isn’t a bad adaptation; unlike the Spy Classroom anime it covers all the plot points in a coherent manner. While the production values are modest, there are some action highlights here and there, like the extensive garuda fight in episode 4. Episode 6 also pulled off a great tone shift, enough to cause a mild stir among anime-only viewers.
And yet, despite loving the light novels for their endless imagination, I had this weird thought when watching the first episode of the anime: “Doesn’t this story seem…generic?”
I always knew, of course, that the elevator pitch for Reign of the Seven Spellblades is “what if Harry Potter but the students have swords and it’s edgy”, which hardly sounds like an original concept. But I am reminded that storytelling is entirely about the telling. The series establishes a unique narrative tone in two distinct ways:
- The magic is full of wonder and mystery
- Every mage character, regardless of how much of a “good guy” they are, is unhinged in some way
You can see this on display in the anime to an extent. For example, there are scenes where magical creatures are shown doing their own thing in the background, adding a sense of whimsy to the world. Also, while a lot of elements in isolation take cues from Harry Potter, the labyrinth is somewhat different in that regard. It stands out as a no-man’s land where students and monsters alike go rogue. Most of the story’s extracurricular scenes take place there—not coincidentally, it’s also the location of the darkest scenes.
As for the second point, this is something that primarily becomes evident over time. It makes sense that Oliver’s true motivations come to light almost straight after a seemingly benign upperclassman student reveals herself to be a mad scientist type. The fundamental nature of a mage is that they proudly pursue their obsessions to the extent that they may seem inhuman, and this theme is repeated again and again across various characters’ subplots.
This knowledge serves to recontextualise Nanao’s interactions with Oliver in the earlier episodes, which probably came off as strange and stilted at the time. When she duels Oliver in episode 2, the two of them experience a peculiar spiritual connection. Contrary to his previously unassuming personality, Oliver experiences a sudden passionate desire to fight her to the death. The audience doesn’t know Oliver well enough at this point to understand why this is so deeply out of character for him, and the dialogue does not address it directly. It is only in retrospect that it is clear that Oliver’s obsession with his murdered mother informs a lot of his relationship with Nanao in ways that not even he understands himself.
Yet for all that, even after nine episodes, it’s hard to shake the impression that Reign of the Seven Spellblades is a rather cookie-cutter anime set in a magic school. Admittedly, the story does spend a lot of time on petty conflicts which just amount to “cocky student challenges Oliver and co. to a fight, only to quickly get owned”. But even the more interesting subplots, like the Pete’s genderbending and Katie’s civil rights activism, feel sort of weightless in context. It’s as if the series throws a bunch of elements at a canvas, but not with enough commitment to let anything stick, and thus the picture as a whole lacks personality.
Perhaps the visual direction lacks the finesse to effectively tie the different elements together, or maybe this kind of story simply flows better in prose. The fun of the light novel is that each chapter tells you something new about the world, and it all ends up figuring into the climax of the volume in some way. It’s not irrelevant exposition for the sake of world-building; the series still keeps you on your toes even eight volumes in. It’s honestly up there among my favourite light novels, full stop.
But it’s not like I can simplistically say “the light novel is genius but the anime sucks” because… I have to be honest… seeing some scenes adapted to screen did make me realise how fricken cheesy they were on a conceptual level. Like Nanao spontaneously activating a Spellblade that makes her sword swing faster than light. Or, like, any time Oliver puts on that edgy masquerade mask.
At this point, I have to remind myself that the source material spends multiple volumes on a tournament arc, and I have to frankly admit: “Yeah, this light novel is just inherently like that.”
But hey, isn’t that the appeal of an anime Harry Potter? Adding some ridiculous Shonen Jump nonsense to a tried and true formula? I’m not going to hold any of that against Reign of the Seven Spellblades. Maybe the real problem with the anime is that it doesn’t commit hard enough to the things that make this series goofy but also somehow awesome.
At any rate, if you find any element of Reign of the Seven Spellblades interesting or entertaining, I highly recommend checking out the light novels to experience the story at its full potential. Volume 5 features an absolutely glorious fight, an indisputable highlight of the entire medium. Read it for yourself and imagine how it would look with bombastic sakuga.
Frogkun.com 
Based on what I’ve read of the light novels, my opinion is that the bits and pieces that make up Reign of the Seven Spellblades are not particularly unique — but that doesn’t matter as much, I’d argue, as the author simply being a capable writer. And Spellblades isn’t Bokuto Uno’s first rodeo — from what I have gleaned online, Alderamin on the Sky was a pretty well-liked military-focused series. At the very least, I’d say Uno knows how to craft characters with conflicts, giving them backgrounds, giving them arcs… and even keeping in mind the different ways they should all interact with one another (basic stuff that many beginner writers fail to even consider, let alone implement effectively). Uno also knows how to bring places to life through clear description, keep a plot moving along steadily with scenes that vary in tone (avoiding a repetitive-feeling “plateau”), and show exciting moments of action without bogging things down too much with explanations and statistics.
And when it comes to the topic of the story feeling generic, I think Spellblades does at least do a good enough job at giving things its own spin. It borrows much of its magical setting from Hogwarts School of Harry Potter, and much of its action style from the highly chuuni duels of Fate’s Holy Grail Wars. But Uno has put in the effort to at least make Kimberly Academy his own magic school, and to make the magic systems of Spellblades his own slight spin on things too. All the little details add up to flesh out the world of a story, and many fantasy light novelists out there simply don’t put in enough effort on that front. In a way, the lack of an especially standout gimmick in the premise of Spellblades is actually a bit refreshing for the genre at this point.
I came across this commentary on the 2D isometric turn-based Fallout games versus the 3D action RPG Fallout games, but I feel like it could apply to LNs versus anime too.
In a limited medium like text (illustrated or not) or a 2D RPG, text descriptions and condensed world design don’t create a one-to-one representation of a world, but a multimedia impression wherein the player or reader or viewer uses the ideas suggested by the limited information to generate a greater whole. The player is also the author of their own impression of the text, what things look and sound and smell like from a view not abstracted through text or limited 2D visuals, that’s all imagination. Visual adaptations of books often feel off because we construct our imaginative versions of things independently from the original work and it’s always more personal to us than the one-to-one representation of a more visual or a three-dimensional adaptation.
The text and illustrations of the novel of Seven Spellblades suggests to us a world that feels engaging and full of depth, an atmosphere that blends both wonder and dread in a golden ratio, and larger than life characters with depths and expression to them that draw us in, but which demands the reader’s imaginative participation to fill in the gaps.
In comparison, in an animated medium where visuals are extremely important, viewers can only see and hear what’s right in front of them as a 1:1 representation of that world’s reality, and they are not impressed with the far more limited and stiff world that they observe.
frog-sama, very interesting review and conclusion that the Reign of the Seven Spellblades Is Not As Generic As It Seems, frog, you a great reviewing frog you the frog-goat
Spy Class anime got good in s2 tho ;w;
Love your reviews, but I’ll disagree on parts of this one, assertions like “Nanao spontaneously activating a Spellblade” seeming to be cheesy or contrived. Unlike say Harry Potter, the author of Spellblades put a lot of thought into worldbuilding and reveals of characters’ pasts that explain their abilities in the present. Nanao was hand picked by one of the greatest mages in the world, who also is an instructor at Kimberly and he did it for a purpose. The broom of the former greatest mage in the world accepted her too.
Np, my man. I have to say that I didn’t mean to say that Nanao activating the Spellblade was contrived, since her unusual talents were established well in advance. But “sword moving faster than light” is, inherently, a silly-sounding ability, imo, lol.
Faster than light blade sounds fun to people with background in physics, tachyons can go into past and change things in the present. There is the wee little detail of needing transfinite energy to get a blade going that fast but I’m sure Nanao’s Ki strength is big. 8D
Honestly, main takeaway with Spellblades so called genericness more with genre than the adaptation.
Its been almost a decade since any new magic academy has been popular at least in west because its still suffering genre fatigue from how over-saturated & boilerplate they had become by mid 2010s they felt ubiquitous by that point. Which is I think is reason why there people find Spellblade generic despite either not citing a specific reason beyond “its set in a school” or “one character has ringlets”. In fact I’m pretty sure ta this point most anime fans don’t really remember why shows like “Hundred” or “Undefeatable Bahamut Chronicle” outside vague tropes of “harem”, “OP MC”, “Japanese magic school”, “lots of girls” which make accusations of Spellblades being just derivative more baffling to me as someone was around during their height and notes none of things are really present. Which is why even before the twist in first book Spellblades had already stood for me based on setting alone which draw HP which at his point only “Mashie” has done, yet somehow that’s become generic now which just defiles the term.
Like objectively its not all popular airing shows this aren’t any less generic than Spellblades. Listing of some examples here but ZOM100, My Happy Marriage or Jujutsu Kaisen are all fill with common character archetypes, tropes, designs, settings and that truly well worn at this point. What interesting to me though is that like with Spellblades, ZOM100 & MHM do bring some form uniqueness such the former’s social commentary on work culture in midst of a zombie apocalypse and later’s mixing of supernatural elements with it’s romance narrative, but JJK is purely by the numbers shounen yet dwarfs them in mindshare. Its largely thanks to slick production and its in-built fansbase from result of manga being far more accessible platforms. Spellblade’s level of production is good, above average at very least, but it had been on par with JJK it might have been able gloss over the feelings of genericness with sheer muscle power of its animation like JJK does.
I can really concluded from this that most anime fans don’t actually care if something is truly generic or not. Afterall there have been plenty good original works like “Rokka no Yuusha” and “The Executioner and Her Way of Life” that never took off. Its really that just most anime fans don’t know they want, whether they will enjoy something or not is ultimately up to mood of the times and how lavishly produced a particular anime is. Generic is just lazily misused caych all term a lot of anime fans use when they can’t describable why don’t like something exactly or admit the vibe of a work isn’t for them.
Now this not to say Spellblades had no tropes or does not sheer some common cliches with its peers, but even those things rarely play out the sameway they have in other series. Like Oliver and Nanao do fight each other early on in the story as been custom in the genre however, the context and result are both highly different than most magical academies do. So it feel disingenuous to me to label Spellblades generic because that happens at all. Its like calling JJK generic soley of the fact that a power system exist and characters use it to fight.
I can’t but feel this type of show that would have been more poplaur had come out a couple years earlier. At least the good news is that Spellblades is steady climbing the ranks of the summer season in notoriety and anime-onlies are starting to notice its charms. The show should end on with better impression than its more humble beginning gave off because its a gem definitely deserves more attention than its
The tropes in the media you’ve mentioned are being criticised though, I think? “My Happy Marriage” and “Jujutsu Kaisen” are very clichéd and heavy with tropes of their respective genres from what I can tell too (especially the former), among the other things. It just is the way of how tropes are used and the entire package which you alluded to as well; “tropes are tools” after all.
(Also, I see your comment being cut off after some lengths as the proof that WordPress doesn’t like overly long comments – ‘proof’ because now I know that it wasn’t only in many of mine for a while now, haha <:D)
As I always said, “‘Harry Potter’ is amongst the most successful and renown Shounen that came out of cinema in recent decades.” It is quite fitting then that there is a variant of it in Shounen media. : 9
Other than that, while I haven’t read or watched this one (yet? I’m not a Shounen enthusiast), I can remember similar pieces, so what Cho Desu says up/down there is basically it: The art lies not solely within the story, but within the storytelling, so even the most generic media can be presented in an intriguing fashion without being bland if the creator is one who knows their craft.
[…] talked a lot about adaptation in my last post about Reign of the Seven Spellblades as well, but in this case, I don’t think there was […]
[…] talked a lot about adaptation in my last post about Reign of the Seven Spellblades as well, but in this case, I don’t think there was really […]